The library is one of three in eastern Ghana's Volta Region; it serves 900,000 residents, including 10,000 in Worawora. About 40 percent of adults in the area read, and 80 to 90 percent of children also read, according to the library board and local officials.

On a summer afternoon, children spread books across the floor.

Kyerewaa Heartwell, 10, is reading "Anasim My Greedy Brother," (she has a brother, she says, but he's not greedy). Brechum Bernard, 15, who's starting high school this year and loves religion and math books, sits at a table reading "Cry Justice: The Bible on Hunger and Poverty" by Ronald Sider. Felix Dankwa, 10, approaches a shelf and picks out P.D. Eastman's "Are You My Mother?"

"If I come and learn, if they ask us something in school, the teacher ask me, then I can answer them," he says.

Students at the village's two middle schools, about 70 total, all passed their government-mandated high school entry exams this fall for the first time in recent memory. Local assemblymen credit the library, where many students who live without electricity go to study.

The library offers daily computer and literacy classes for about $2 per course. Teachers are paid between $20 and $35 a month, so little that they're practically volunteering, founder Kofi Addai says.

The bulk of the library's $100 monthly operating budget pays staff salaries. The rest covers library electricity and maintenance. Addai raises the money and sends it to Ghana.

At an afternoon literacy class, teacher Mercy Safoa invites 16 women to take turns walking to a chalkboard to copy a word in Twi: "nnboa," teamwork. They have spoken Twi, their native language, all of their lives, but never learned to read or write it. They are also learning English and practicing a song: "Today Is Literacy Day."

Most say they are mothers and grandmothers whose children moved to the cities. If they learn to write Twi and English, they will no longer have to rely on others to read letters from their children or to have someone help them with their finances. Such go-betweens can meddle in their personal affairs and finances, they say.

Janet Mentah, 40, says that since starting to attend the class she can read letters from her three children and signs around town.

"I speak small, small," says Mentah, who comes to class in a printed dress and headwrap. "First no write, now I start write."

She says the class has also helped her keep the books at her business: she sells yams, peanuts and rice. And with the help of the library, she's not stopping there, she says: "Next one: computer school."